In Memoriam

SAME requires continuous monitoring of the weather channel, so that is an exclusive (i.e. not while you are scanning) mode. The reason is that the SAME digital bursts can be as short as 1 second (or a little less). So, the scanner would have to sample every .5 seconds to be sure it didn't miss a SAME message.

I don't think you'd ever use a mode that broke up the audio every .5 seconds...most people don't like it when it breaks up every 5 seconds, as happens with Weather Priority mode.